The Grenada gazette. (Grenada, Miss.) 1885-18??, 1887-12-17
LAKE moes,s.
Repetition of . Great Engineering Enter
prlse Carried Out by Joseph.

.H- -
R.,etition Of . Great Engineering Enter
prise Carried Out by Joseph.
The European press published thu
statement three or four weeks ago tina
the Egyptian Minister of Public Works
had decided to utilize the recent dis
~coyery of the bed of ancient Lake
Moeris. He wished to rebuild the old
canal that nearly four thousand years
agowas dug between the basin and the
Nile, and make this great depression
about sixty miles southwest Of Cairo
once more the reservoir for the surplus
waters of the Nile at flood. He has,
| therefore, declined the offer made
through Mr.. Whitehouse to restore
Lake Moeris by private enterprise to its
ancient function of receiving and dis
pensing the waters of the Nile.
This Is a proposal to repeat in modern
times a great engineering enterprise
which the patriarch Joseph is said by
some authorities to have carried out. 1t
is all the more noteworthy because the
fact that Lake Moeris ever existed has
been denied for centuries. Linaut some
forty years ago revived the notion that
Herodotus told the truth after all, but
not until 1882 did the best geographical
authorities agree that there was once y
Lake Moeris, and that its ancient bed
had been found.
Of the wonders that Herodotus de-
scribed as existing near Memphis, two.
the Labyrinth and Lake Moeris, have
been unknown to modern research. He
and other ancient writer's agreed TO de-
scribing Lake Mocris, as a reservoir of
the Nile, four hundred and fifty miles
in circumference, three hundred feet
ieep and full of fish of twenty-five
There were dykes at the mouths
the canal by which the engineers
'tored up or distributed It's water sup.
by. The lake was mostly bordered by
he desert. On its banks lived multi
udes of fishermen. who caught and
allied the fish that bred freely in the
akc, which owed its existence to one
+ more artificial channels connecting
with the Nile.
Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus, Pliny
nd other Greek and Latin writer's have
cen freely charged with falsehood or
xaggggeration in what they wrote about
AXE Moeris. G. Ptolcniy placed the
or~n-shaped lake on his map at the
cry place where exists the great de-
OF similar shape to which it is
DIV assigned. Some copies of his map,
owever, did not contain the lake, and
litors OF Ptolemy in the fifteenth cen ,
ry expurged it from his map, and it
only recently that it has reappeared !
all the best maps. Chiefly through F.,
e researches of Linaut, Whitehouse, =,
i'd, last of all, Stadler, whose observa- ,
ms completed in February established /;
G correctness Of previous explorations, =,
e world has at last been convinced !
at on the southern edge of the Fay 9
m exists a great depression, which is i
rec hundred feet below the level of :
Q river, and is separated by a chain ,
hills from the Nile. with which it was
&c connected by tho Bahr Josuf, or .
nal Of Joseph, and perhaps also by ;
other artificial channel. !
is asserted by Mr.. Whitehouse and :
. engineers in Egypt's service who &C. i
.panied him in his last journey in q
that the work of restoring the lake q
IL prove comparatively easy. They '
innate that during the time Of the i,
les flood the basin a receive at =
Ist $4,000, 900 cubic metres of water q u
y; and that this volume, shut up in a !,
e reservoir, will avert all danger of a
excessive foundations that aflict "
fertile delta. From this reservoir, p
0, when the Nile is low, water can be b
1t back to the river for purposes of y
or irrigation. They also as n
t that a vast :.mount of land now n
'petually under water can, by means q
this reservoir. be restored to agricul- r
e; that the big lakes around Alexan- a
a will thus be drained, and the Med a
shores of Egypt will again a
cmble the mouths of the Rhine and Il
coast of HOliand.-N Y Sun :.